1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cassette transfer mechanism, and more particularly to a method which is for storing data in a memory included in a cassette and/or reading data from the same without a necessity of loading the cassette recording medium into a drive unit whenever data is stored or read.
2. Description of Related Art
A portion of cassette recording mediums each accommodating a recording medium includes a type having a memory including a semiconductor device whereby storing a variety of information, for example, date of manufacture, a manufacturing plant, title of information stored in the recording medium, name of the file, specifications of the recording medium, state of use, the position of a stored information signal in the recording medium and the contents of the information signal.
The cassette recording medium including a memory of the foregoing type can be used, for example, in a cassette library system for accommodating a multiplicity of cassette recording mediums in an accommodating rack thereof in such a manner that a required cassette recording medium can be ejected from the accommodating rack.
Hitherto, information has been stored in and/or read from a cassette recording medium including a memory of the foregoing type such that a storing and/or reading unit for storing information in the memory and/or reading information from the same is provided in the inside portion of the drive; and information is stored in the memory and/or read from the same.
When information is stored in the memory of the above-mentioned cassette library system or read from the same, the cassette recording medium must therefore be loaded into the drive whenever a storing or reading operation is performed. As a result, the simple operation for confirming the contents of the memory included in the cassette recording medium must be performed by loading the cassette recording medium into the drive whenever information is stored or read. Therefore, there arises a problem in that time is wasted.